Head Butler - Music

Christmas with the Tallis Scholars

There was a time when I loved holiday CDs like “Christmas with the Rat Pack.” Or the Mariah Carey Christmas album. And there's a part of me that really wants to hear what Clay Aiken does with “O, Holy Night.”

Maybe I'll get goofy again, but this year, with Christmas looming, I want music that touches me. Moves me. Even transports me.

For that, we need to look back 400 or 500 years, to a time when J.S. Bach wrote “SDG” on the bottom of every composition --- short for “soli deo gloria,” or “to God alone be the glory.” In those days, individual ego was unthinkable; your purpose in life was to add your small stone to the building of the cathedral.

We hear that collective ambition in the great choral pieces of the Renaissance --- magnificent voices blending together to sing, in harmony, their praise to the Almighty. And, today, we hear that holy music, delivered intact, in the recordings of The Tallis Scholars.

Founded in 1973 by Peter Phillips, this English group has released 50 CDs. Most of its recent releases were recorded at a 16th century church in a remote part of Norfolk, England, notable for its acoustics and the absence of traffic. The result: several generations of music-lovers around the world have learned about Renaissance music's gorgeous arcs of flowing sound.

Here's Peter Phillips on the group's sound: "It's bright, agile and endlessly flexible. It's very well-tuned and blended and soft and seductive, so it draws people in. It's not abrasive, not harsh, but it's not weak either. There's real tension in it. It's a sort of flat paradox, but it's immensely strong and tough and soft and caressing. And over the years, it's gotten more forthright, so it's hard to remain indifferent to it when it's in front of you. It demands attention. People are not there for the words, they're there for the sound of the music. Because it's abstract music, a lot of it, anyway."

For abstract music, it's gloriously immediate. As background music, it soothes. As music to contemplate, it's surprisingly powerful. And in live performance, it's sublime.

[Note: On the theory that Renaissance holiday music is as unfamiliar as the Greatest Hits of the Renaissance, you might prefer to order “The Essential Tallis Scholars” instead. To buy that double-CD package --- for the ridiculous price of $14.99 --- from Amazon, click here.]

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To order "Christmas with the Tallis Scholars" from Amazon.com, click here.